


wishing upon a star

by psychoticsnow_white



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: (Jean will be fine), (and so will Jeremy), Anxiety, General trigger warning for Ravens backstory, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Present/Past abuse, Recovery, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 19:38:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15692052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychoticsnow_white/pseuds/psychoticsnow_white
Summary: Jean realizes too soon birthday wishes are useless ; that doesn't stop him from making them, every year.or, how Jeremy helps jean to recover after years of not seeing a shooting star to wish upon.





	wishing upon a star

**Author's Note:**

> tw warning in this chapter : violence (not too graphic), rape mentioned.
> 
> since i'm french and not an english native speaker at all, i hope you'll still be able to enjoy my work through my (not too many i hope) mistakes! translatations will be in the end notes.

Piercing grey eyes were looking back at him in the mirror : Jean wasn’t able to recognize the exhausted face right in front of him. The tattoo on his cheekbone didn’t belong to his bruised cheek, and yet, it did. Itchy, a bit swollen, a small « 3 » in black ink that wouldn’t go away even after washing his face several times and scrubbing it harshly with a towel. 

Riko had to have done it to him while he was knocked out : very far away, Jean could remember how rough the blanket of the infirmary’s bed felt over his damaged legs, right after he had to be sent away from the court, completely anesthetized by a ball that hit him right in the head. The training in itself was a blur, and it was impossible to pinpoint what he had done to deserve to be marked like this. Maybe he wasn’t good enough during the training and that was another way of Riko to punish him ; Jean had to admit his captain was rather creative when it came to torturing his puppets. Maybe Jean was more than good that night, and Riko wanted just to gently remind Jean that he was his property.

After exhaling slowly out of his nose and looking at the watch on his scarred wrist, he realized he didn’t have any more time to mourn and that he should head to class before getting in more trouble. Putting his uniform was always a struggle : he kept a straight face while trying to button his shirt with his broken fingers, but couldn’t retain himself from whimpering while putting on his black jacket. His body was a rainbow of colours that went from yellow to purple and raising his arms a bit too high made his chest hurt- putain - fortunately, putting on his wool black scarf concealed his slightly crooked red tie and with that, he went out of his room with Johnson to go to his English class.

All eyes were on him : that wasn’t unusual, considering he was in class with Ravens only, big black birds with piercing eyes when they were hunting a prey, but all glances were directed to the top of his cheekbone, exactly where his identification mark was. That wasn’t enough to distract him during his lesson though ; Riko, accompanied by Kevin, entering his classroom with one of his cold yet huge smile was. That was a habit : Exy was more important than school grades in more than a way, and every time Riko paid him a visit during one of his periods, Jean had to pack his belongings and follow him to the stadium. They had a game against the USC Trojans next week and defeat wasn’t an option, especially because it was Jean’s first match in black.

Days passed slowly when every training session turned into hours of him getting beat up with a racket, his curled up body trembling with small whimpers and cries of plea in French, all covered by Riko’s sadistic loud laugh. He wasn’t supposed to speak French : he was supposed to shut the fuck up and be the third best player on the court. Riko had every right to be mad at him, but that was too painful for Jean to admit : everything Riko said was nothing Jean wanted to believe in. His captain was the best player, without a doubt, but Jean wished his death from sunset until sunrise every night, while trying to find a comfortable position in his cold bed. Now lying on the cold hard floor, Jean painfully realized how the court was becoming a battlefield, him being a wounded soldier with no one to help him get up. His fists clenched next to his face, he also realized it didn’t matter.  
After painfully standing up, leaving bloody hand marks on the wooden floor, he spat at the face of the Son of Exy, ce fils de pute, and was greeted once again by the swing of an exy racket right is his face.

He woke up in his room much later, his hands and feet tied to the bed, his red tie around his mouth like a muzzle, a sharp throb in his head. When Riko finally came in, Kevin obediently following him, Jean couldn’t decide if the worst was the sting of the sharp knives on the pale skin of his arms, or the smile on Riko’s face contrasting with the absence of emotions on Kevin’s.

Actually, the worst was maybe the pain in his lower back when he woke up the next morning, his sports shorts pooled to his bruised ankles.

He didn’t even remember falling asleep last night, neither fainting. His memory was pieces of a puzzle he wasn’t able to reassemble. Even during the day, his brain was on auto-pilot most of the time, thus he was unable to understand what he’s done to get punished, again. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t focus : during his classes, he was an excellent student, and during games, no one couldn’t distract him. When Riko was too close though, Jean just wasn’t there anymore : his mind far away, but his body never out of his captain’s claws reach. 

The match was tomorrow: the feeling of dirtiness in his guts, the soreness in his strained muscles and the throb of his still open wounds all went away during the training that night. It was more than rewarding to know that the win was just there for him to take, and Jean played as hard as he could without fainting at the thought of seeing the score in their favour when the referee will whistle. Frustration and anger were a great fuel, and with his technique slowly getting more and more perfect, Jean knew he was getting where The Master wanted him to be. Riko didn’t punish him that day, even though he swore he could’ve heard Kevin telling him in quiet and hurried French to stay safe tonight, that a stressed out Riko was always worse. Surprisingly, that night, no one came in his bed to remind him how worthless he actually was, but now that he was off court, he couldn’t shake off the strange feeling he had.

Silently, he got up from his bed and went to the bathroom, facing his reflection. Although bruises were painful, nothing compared to the emptiness in his chest while seeing his grey hollow eyes every time he was facing the mirror, doing his quick usual check-up before he went to sleep : he didn’t want any of his injuries to become serious enough that he wouldn’t be able to play. Exy was everything he had left, even if Riko was slowly perverting it ; everything his captain touched became gold : precious yet hard and too cold, filled with many sins. Jean guessed that it was the price to be a perfect player, while slowly pressing the bruises on his ribs to make sure one of them wasn’t broken once again, face completely straight.

As usual, his watch gently rang when midnight came : it rang every hour, a small reminder that he needed to keep moving to stay alive.  
Tonight was different though. His eyes were glued to his watch, and his body was frozen in shock. It’s not that he had forgotten : it was just that it was easier not to think about it. As if he was blowing out candles, he slowly sighed and closed his eyes, unable to look at the boy in the mirror : just a few seconds of rest from the world he found sometimes too cruel. Home was far away and didn’t exist anymore now, and he wondered too much if his mother’s arms would still soothe him to peace like they used to. A few moments later, he opened his eyes and looked around him, just for his eyes to linger on the same black and still empty bathroom he came in not that long ago. It wasn’t Marseille, it wasn’t his small apartment on the sixth floor of the building he grew up. It was the Nest : black and sweltering, where the walls could hear and see everything. He was still there, stuck.

While his crooked fingers where bitterly wiping his resentful tears, Jean realized with too much despair that his sixteen birthday wish didn’t come true.

**Author's Note:**

> translations: putain : fuck (as a noun) / fils de pute : son of a bitch  
> (my writing goal is to teach you as many french swear words i can)


End file.
